TRADING ARMS
Not the loving kind.
Arms-sale Fairs not fair
- the only difference
from art, garden or niche antique ones,
just bloody trade in body parts,
governmental prestige and competition;
nothing to do with
shattered busloads of school children
raw materials to bomb sleeping families,
manufacture of high-spec killing devices
to dismember shoppers, worshippers
called collateral damage:
made in Uk and made in Maryland….
A neat career, fashioning more efficient
ways to annihilate the most,
putting space between trigger,
consequence - and conscience.
Mere Business. Busy with smart deals,
lucrative contracts, everyday transactions to serve desirable markets.
Especially from rich, repressive nations, regimes or groups
who call it deterrence, security, detente.
Money, supposedly neutral,
to fund worthy and necessary causes
- school fees, holidays, mortgages.
Nothing to do with weeping mothers,
crippled babies.
By the grace and skills of disassociation
conveniently distanced:
no need to know the bloody details
of the upfront, real-Time effects
of all that cleverness;
what land-mines actually do,
cluster bombs, sarin, tear gas...
...not to mention biological and
genetically weaponized hardware;
drone software abetting.